Dr Rees Kassen is associate professor and University Research Chair in Experimental Evolution at the University of Ottawa. He completed his PhD at McGill University and then went on to an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship and Elizabeth Wordsworth Research Fellowship at St Hugh’s College, Oxford. He is known internationally for his integrative approach to the study of biodiversity and pioneering work using microbes to study evolutionary and ecological processes in the laboratory. Dr Kassen attended the IAP Young Scientist Conference held in conjunction with the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of New Champions first in 2010 in Tianjin and then again as a mentor in 2011 at Dalian. These meetings have led him to engage more actively in international science policy discussions including hosting a symposium as part of the AAAS 2012 meeting in Vancouver and a contributed 'World Views' editorial on science and decision making to be published presently in Nature. Dr Kassen chairs the Partnership Group for Science and Engineering (PAGSE; www.pagse.org) in Canada, an association of 25 professional and scientific organizations acting on behalf of over 50,000 members from academia, industry and government and is a co-founder and executive council member of the Global Young Academy (www.globalyoungacademy.org), created in 2010 to act as the voice of young scientists around the world.